Firecrawl SEO Site Crawling Commands

---
name: seo-firecrawl
description: ")"
---
# Firecrawl Extension for Claude SEO

This skill requires the Firecrawl extension to be installed:
```bash
./extensions/firecrawl/install.sh
```

**Check availability:** Before using any Firecrawl tool, verify the MCP server
is connected by checking if `firecrawl_scrape` or any Firecrawl tool
is available. If tools are not available, inform the user the extension is not
installed and provide install instructions.

## Quick Reference

| Command | Purpose |
|---------|---------|
| `/seo firecrawl crawl <url>` | Full-site crawl with content extraction |
| `/seo firecrawl map <url>` | Discover site structure (URLs only, fast) |
| `/seo firecrawl scrape <url>` | Single-page scrape with JS rendering |
| `/seo firecrawl search <query> <url>` | Search within a crawled site |

## Commands

### crawl -- Full-Site Crawl

Crawl an entire website starting from the given URL. Returns page content,
metadata, and links for all discovered pages.

**MCP Tool:** `firecrawl_crawl`

**Parameters:**
- `url` (required): Starting URL to crawl
- `limit`: Max pages to crawl (default: 100, max: 500)
- `maxDepth`: Max link depth from start URL (default: 3)
- `includePaths`: Array of glob patterns to include (e.g., `["/blog/*"]`)
- `excludePaths`: Array of glob patterns to exclude (e.g., `["/admin/*", "/api/*"]`)
- `scrapeOptions.formats`: Output formats -- `["markdown", "html", "links"]`

**SEO Usage Patterns:**
1. **Comprehensive audit crawl**: Crawl full site, extract all pages for subagent analysis
2. **Section-focused crawl**: Use `includePaths` to audit only `/blog/*` or `/products/*`
3. **Broken link detection**: Crawl with `["links"]` format, check all hrefs for 404s
4. **Content inventory**: Extract all page titles, meta descriptions, H1s at scale
5. **SPA/JS-rendered sites**: Firecrawl renders JavaScript, solving the Issue #11 problem

**Example orchestration for `/seo audit`:**
```
1. firecrawl_map(url) -> get all URLs (fast, no content)
2. Filter to top 50 most important pages (homepage, key sections)
3. firecrawl_crawl(url, limit=50) -> get full content
4. Feed content to seo-technical, seo-content, seo-schema agents
```

**Cost awareness:**
- Free tier: 500 credits/month
- 1 credit = 1 page crawled or scraped
- Map operations are cheaper (0.5 credits per URL discovered)
- Always inform user of estimated credit usage before large crawls

### map -- Site Structure Discovery

Discover all URLs on a website without fetching content. Fast and credit-efficient.

**MCP Tool:** `firecrawl_map`

**Parameters:**
- `url` (required): Website URL to map
- `limit`: Max URLs to discover (default: 5000)
- `search`: Optional search term to filter URLs

**SEO Usage Patterns:**
1. **Sitemap comparison**: Map site, compare discovered URLs vs XML sitemap
2. **Orphan page detection**: URLs in sitemap but not linked from any page
3. **Crawl budget analysis**: Total indexable pages vs pages linked from homepage
4. **URL pattern analysis**: Identify URL structure patterns, duplicates, parameter bloat
5. **Pre-audit discovery**: Run map first, then targeted crawl on key sections

**Output:** Array of URLs. Present as:
```
Site: example.com
Pages discovered: 342

URL Pattern Breakdown:
  /blog/*          - 128 pages (37%)
  /products/*      - 89 pages (26%)
  /category/*      - 45 pages (13%)
  /pages/*         - 32 pages (9%)
  / (root pages)   - 48 pages (14%)
```

### scrape -- Single-Page Deep Scrape

Scrape a single page with full JavaScript rendering. More thorough than
`fetch_page.py` because it executes JS and waits for dynamic content.

**MCP Tool:** `firecrawl_scrape`

**Parameters:**
- `url` (required): Page URL to scrape
- `formats`: Output formats -- `["markdown", "html", "links", "screenshot"]`
- `onlyMainContent`: Strip nav/footer/sidebar (default: true)
- `waitFor`: CSS selector or milliseconds to wait for content
- `timeout`: Request timeout in ms (default: 30000)
- `actions`: Browser actions before scraping (click, scroll, wait)

**SEO Usage Patterns:**
1. **SPA content extraction**: Scrape JS-rendered React/Vue/Angular pages
2. **Dynamic content audit**: Pages with lazy-loaded content below the fold
3. **Paywall/login detection**: Identify content behind authentication walls
4. **Main content extraction**: Use `onlyMainContent` for clean E-E-A-T analysis
5. **Screenshot capture**: Use `screenshot` format for visual analysis

**When to use scrape vs fetch_page.py:**
| Scenario | Use |
|----------|-----|
| Static HTML page | `fetch_page.py` (no API cost) |
| JS-rendered SPA | `firecrawl_scrape` (renders JS) |
| Need response headers | `fetch_page.py` (returns headers) |
| Need clean markdown | `firecrawl_scrape` (better extraction) |
| Rate-limited/blocked | `firecrawl_scrape` (handles anti-bot) |

### search -- Site-Scoped Search

Search within a website for specific content. Useful for finding pages
related to a topic without crawling everything.

**MCP Tool:** `firecrawl_search`

**Parameters:**
- `query` (required): Search query
- `url` (required): Website to search within
- `limit`: Max results (default: 10)
- `scrapeOptions.formats`: Output format for matched pages

**SEO Usage Patterns:**
1. **Content gap validation**: Search for a keyword on the site to check if content exists
2. **Internal linking opportunities**: Find pages mentioning a topic that could link to each other
3. **Duplicate content detection**: Search for key phrases to find near-duplicates
4. **Competitor content research**: Search competitor site for specific topics

## Cross-Skill Integration

### With seo-audit (full audit)
When Firecrawl is available during `/seo audit`:
1. Use `firecrawl_map` to discover all site URLs
2. Compare with XML sitemap (seo-sitemap) to find orphan/missing pages
3. Select top pages for deep analysis
4. Feed crawled content to all subagents (technical, content, schema, geo)
5. Report total crawlable pages, URL patterns, and crawl depth

### With seo-technical
- Broken link detection: crawl all internal links, check for 404s
- Redirect chain mapping: follow all redirects, flag chains > 2 hops
- Mixed content detection: check HTTP resources on HTTPS pages
- Canonical verification: compare canonical URLs with actual URLs

### With seo-sitemap
- Sitemap coverage: % of crawled pages present in sitemap
- Orphan pages: pages found by crawl but missing from sitemap
- Stale sitemap entries: URLs in sitemap that return 404/410

### With seo-content
- Content extraction: feed clean markdown to E-E-A-T analysis
- Thin content detection: identify pages with < 300 words at scale
- Duplicate content: compare content across pages for near-duplicates

### With seo-schema
- Schema extraction: pull JSON-LD from all crawled pages
- Schema coverage: % of pages with structured data
- Schema validation: batch-validate extracted schemas

## Error Handling

| Error | Cause | Resolution |
|-------|-------|-----------|
| `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY not set` | MCP not configured | Run `./extensions/firecrawl/install.sh` |
| `402 Payment Required` | Credits exhausted | Check usage at firecrawl.dev/app, upgrade plan |
| `429 Too Many Requests` | Rate limited | Wait 60s, reduce crawl concurrency |
| `408 Timeout` | Page too slow to render | Increase `timeout`, try without JS rendering |
| `403 Forbidden` | Site blocks crawling | Check robots.txt, may need to skip this site |

**Graceful fallback:** If Firecrawl is unavailable, inform the user and suggest:
1. Use `fetch_page.py` for single-page analysis (no API cost)
2. Use `WebFetch` tool for basic HTML retrieval
3. Install Firecrawl: `./extensions/firecrawl/install.sh`